aahhh, the good old days
Posted on 08/30/2009 4:38:10 PM PDT by abb
Freedom Communications Inc., the owner of the Orange County Register, is expected to declare bankruptcy this week, according to people familiar with the situation, the latest in a string of Chapter 11 filings in the battered newspaper business.
The company, majority owned for more than 70 years by the Hoiles family, has reached agreements with its lenders to restructure its debts, according to these people.
With annual revenue of about $700 million, Freedom owns the Register and more than 30 other daily papers and eight TV stations. Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization -- a popular measurement for leveraged companies -- have declined about 75% over the past five years to about $50 million.
Freedom was founded in the 1930s by R. C. Hoiles, a former printer's apprentice who used his publications in part to spread his libertarian views. The Orange County Register continues the libertarian approach but, like other newspapers across the country, has had to confront the question of its survival.
"We are continuing to work with our lenders to address our balance sheet," said a Freedom spokesman.
Freedom's lenders, which hold roughly $770 million in debt, are expected to take control of the company as it operates under bankruptcy protection. They include J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., SunTrust Banks and Union Bank of California.
The filing is a blow to private-equity firms Blackstone Group and Providence Equity Partners, which acquired a 40% equity stake in the company in 2004 for about $460 million. The deal, which used a relatively small amount of debt compared to later deals in the buyout boom, already has been written down to zero by both firms.
The Hoiles family has been divided for years about what to do with the Irvine, Calif., company.
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(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
ping
Their editorial page has remained Libertarian/Conservative, but the news sections often come across to the left of the LA Times!
Editorially maybe, but a lot of papers still carry AP/NY Times and WashPost articles while having “conservative” editorials. That doesn’t make them conservative papers.
I suspect if you surveyed any group of J-school grads (the folks who write the news stories), less than 5% would qualify as conservative or libertarian.
Wouldn’t the unvarnished “truth” be preferable to any slant — whether conservative, libertarian, liberal, or whatever? (Of course, we’ll never know for sure.)
I agree. They is no difference between the Register and the LA Times except for the editorial page. Makes me sick.
I keep looking over the old papers at rarenewspapers.com many of them had 8 columns and no images or large headline fonts at all. We could fit a lot of news into that format.
I suspect a merger of the LAT and OC Register will be coming soon... the OC Register has already contracted with the LAT for home delivery of their papers.
aahhh, the good old days
Neither paper will survive long enough for a merger to take place, I suspect.
Not surprised. The physical size of the paper has been shrinking for some years, various columnists have been furloughed, and the quality of the reporting has deteriorated. Too bad, because if absorbed by the LA Times, that would kill it completely.
Freedom Communications is ostensibly a Libetarian newspaper company. Our local paper is one of its properties. It has a mix of libertarian columnists and leftwingers. The editor is pretty conservative personally but runs some strange columnists from the left. Walter Williams used to be a weekly feature but I have not seen his column in a couple of years. I think Freedom and its local papers have responded to hard times for newspapers by trying to get into the “mainstream” more. The trouble with that is that the newspaper mainstream is running the wrong way.
I have said for some time that it is more an issue of technological progress than political philosophy. Ink-on-paper information physically hand-delivered to street addresses is just able to compete with the internet.
“not” able.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/31/business/media/31zell.html?_r=1&ref=business
Tribune Chief May Remain for the Cleanup
Wow, the Tribune disappeared into the Herald Tribune in 1924! You do go back aways!
rarenewspapers.com
I like the 1800’s look.
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